every time
I try to write a poem
about you
I end up writing a poem
to you
and it goes right past you.
someone tell him how to feel.
bombs above us,
skies above bombs,
sky,
tell him how to feel.
I heard you’re the same everywhere,
sky.

when I try to not think about your name
I think about the piece of land
you sleep on
most days of the year
and when I read the news especially
you have a different name,
bigger—
Qatar pledges its full support for Egypt and I
become far, far, far
away
on colonized land
all the same.

it’s a self-regulatory
how-to-love
mechanism
I have developed over the past two years
to avoid love
all together.

even our geographies resist,
proving that
you’re almost an island
& I am cold as fuck
& god is a capitalist asshole
who cares not
about the cancerous distance
between
island waters
& frozen blood.

everyone I meet helps me
write about you especially
when they write their lovers’
names on cigarette smokes
but I never write your
name on cigarette smokes
(I do not think of you
when cigarettes smoke)

I only write your name
dignified
in a language
undignified
on solicited people;
they are all blood suckers